Red Star Over Shambhala: Soviet, British and American Intelligence & the Search for Lost Civilisation in Central Asia

Red Star Over Shambhala: Soviet, British and American Intelligence & the Search for Lost Civilisation in Central Asia

BY DR. RICHARD SPENCE

On his way across the wastes of Mongolia in 1921, Polish writer and refugee Ferdinand Ossendowski witnessed some strange behaviour on the part of his Mongol guides. Stopping their camels in the middle of nowhere, they began to pray in great earnestness while a strange hush fell over the animals and everything around. The Mongols later explained that this ritual happened whenever “the King of the World in his subterranean palace prays and searches out the destiny of all people on Earth.”1
From assorted lamas, Ossendowski learned that this King of the World was ruler of a mysterious, but supposedly very real, kingdom, “Agharti.” In Agharti, he was told, “the learned Panditas [masters of Buddhist arts and sciences] write on tablets of stone all the science of our planet and of the other worlds.”2 Whoever gained access to the underground realm would have access to incredible knowledge – and power.
Ossendowski was not exactly a casual listener. As noted in a previous article [The “Bloody” Baron von Ungern-Sternberg: Madman or Mystic?, New Dawn No. 108 (May-June 2008)], during 1921 he would become a key adviser to “Mad Baron” Roman von Ungern-Sternberg who established a short-lived regime in the Outer Mongolian capital of Urga.3 A self-proclaimed warrior Buddhist who dreamed of leading a holy war in Asia, the Baron allegedly tried to contact the “King of the World” in hopes of furthering his scheme.
Ossendowski’s credibility later was assailed by the likes of Swedish explorer Sven Hedin.4 Among other things, Hedin accused the Pole of plagiarising the story of Agarthi from an earlier work by French esotericist Joseph Alexandre St.-Yves d’Alveydre.5 To one extent or another, that probably was true, but Hedin, a veteran seeker after lost cities, did not dismiss the possibility of a hidden Kingdom; indeed, he likely harboured the aim of finding it himself.
In any event, Ossendowski did not invent the story of a fabulous land secreted somewhere in – or under – the vastness of Central Asia, be it called Agharti, Agarttha, Shangri-la, or, most commonly, Shambhala.6 Some believed it to be a physical, subterranean realm inhabited by an ancient, advanced race, while to others it was a spiritual dimension accessible only to the enlightened. The Shambhala legend is firmly grounded in Buddhist tradition which vaguely puts the Kingdom somewhere to the north of India. The legend also proclaimed that a time would come when the King of Shambhala and his mighty hosts would come forth to vanquish evil and usher in a golden age guided by pure Dharma. As noted, Baron von Ungern-Sternberg envisioned himself as the initiator of this “Shambhala War.” So would others.
The tantalising possibility of a hidden trove of advanced knowledge and technical know-how did not just pique the curiosity of explorers and occultists. The practical advantages to be gained by accessing and exploiting such knowledge was not lost on certain politicians and intelligence officers, above all in Soviet Russia. But whatever attracted the attention of the Bolsheviks was bound to draw British curiosity as well, and where both those powers were concerned, the Americans, Germans and Japanese were unlikely to be far behind.
This article focuses on the activities of three men, two Russians and one American: Aleksandr Vasil’evich Barchenko, the so-called “Bolshevik professor of the occult,” the artist-mystic-explorer Nicholas Roerich, and the man often cited as the real-life model for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews. While, so far as can be told, none of the trio ever met, all were involved with expeditions roaming the deserts of Mongolia and the high valleys of the Himalayas in search of lost civilisation and ancient man. In the case of Barchenko and Roerich, the specific object was Shambhala. As we will see, these explorations were only the tip of a clandestine iceberg of intrigue and hidden agendas which included secret societies and a host of spies. Just who was doing what for whom – and why – remains uncertain.

“Bolshevik professor of the occult” Aleksandr Barchenko

A.V. Barchenko was born in Elets in 1881 and manifested an early interest in the “paranormal.” Part occultist, part scientist, part explorer, and maybe just a bit of a charlatan, Barchenko was, above all, a seeker. His interests came to focus on recovering the lost knowledge of a prehistoric civilisation, remnants of which he thought might still survive. It was in medical school, c. 1901-1905, that Barchenko gravitated to Masonic and Theosophist circles and their esoteric doctrines. One of his professors was acquainted with the above Saint-Yves d’Alveydre, and so introduced his pupil to the legend of Agarttha/Shambhala.
D’Alveydre’s works also promoted the mystical-political doctrine of Synarchy, a system supposedly perfected by the denizens of the hidden Kingdom. Loosely defined, Synarchy signifies “rule by secret society” or enlightened elite. In the late 19th century, the idea was picked up by yet another French occultist, Gerard Encausse, better known as Papus, who combined it with another mystical current, Martinism, to form the quasi-Masonic Ordre Martiniste et Synarchie.7 During 1900-1905, Papus visited Russia where he established cells of his new order and even recruited members among the Romanovs.8 More intriguing are suggestions that Papus simultaneously functioned as a French “agent of influence” to counter German intrigue among the Russian elite and, more secretly, to foster social revolution. One associate of Papus later claimed that Martinism was the “germ of Sovietism.”9
Prior to World War I, Barchenko embarked on a career as journalist and writer. At the same time, he joined the Martinist Order and the “Kabbalistic Order of the Rose & Cross.”10 His ever-widening interest in the occult came to include palmistry, the Tarot, alchemy, hypnosis, “radiant energy,” astrology and mind-reading. In 1911 he wrote an article for Priroda i liudi (“Nature and People”) on “thought transference.”11 His literary outpourings included two “fantastic” novels, Doktor Chernyi (“Dr. Black”) and Iz mrak (“From the Darkness”). His literary alter ego, Dr. Aleksandr Nikolaevich Chernyi, had spent years in India and Tibet studying arcane knowledge at the feet of mysterious mahatmas. Barchenko dreamed of doing the same.
After brief service in World War I, Barchenko returned to Petrograd (the renamed St. Petersburg) where he moved deeper into occult circles. One self-proclaimed master of Eastern mysticism who frequented Petrograd in this period was George Gurdjieff. Whether Barchenko had direct contact with him is uncertain, but he was well-versed in Gurdjieff’s teachings and the two would be linked in curious ways in the years ahead.
While Barchenko welcomed the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas in 1917, he was not enamoured of Lenin’s Bolsheviks. Still, to earn a living in the post-October environment, he began giving lectures on esoteric subjects to the revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet. He used Shambhala as an example of a “primeval communist society,” which had been part of a prehistoric “great universal federation of peoples.”12 Such Bolshevik-sounding sentiments contrasted with his more private affiliations. In the “Sphinx” society, Barchenko associated with Martinists, Theosophists and “Christian pacifists” who were out-and-out enemies of Soviet power. He later confessed that the group harboured “conspiratorial quarters of the White Guards” and connived with militant anti-Bolsheviks such as Boris Savinkov.13 Savinkov, in turn, actively conspired with British and French agents, among them Ace-of-Spies Sidney Reilly who helped concoct an abortive effort to overthrow Lenin in the summer of 1918.14
One result of that failed plot was the “Red Terror,” a wave of bloody reprisals spearheaded by the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka. So, when Barchenko received a summons to the office of the Petrograd Cheka (P-Cheka) in the fall of 1918, it was an ominous sign. However, he found there a cadre of fellow Martinists and students of the occult who had no interest in shooting him as a counter-revolutionary.15
The most important of these chekisty was Konstantin Konstantinovich Vladimirov, a self-described “psychographologist” who would do much to promote Barchenko and his ideas within the Soviet establishment. On the surface, it would appear that Vladimirov recruited Barchenko as an informer in occult circles, but things may not have been so simple.Vladimirov’s own loyalties are questionable. He soon was involved in the case of two Britons, Harold Rayner and G.H. Turner, arrested for supposed involvement in the August 1918 assassination of the chief of P-Cheka, Moisei Uritsky. The actual gunman was a follower of the above Boris Savinkov. Even more interesting, Vladimirov and comrades apparently nabbed the wrong men. Then, instead of being executed, one somehow managed to evade proletarian justice and make it back to England.Finally, Vladimirov became romantically involved with the widow of the second Englishman, a woman also identified as a British spy. As a result, he found himself booted from the Cheka, but somehow managed to get himself reinstated. However, in 1927 Vladimirov was again arrested and ultimately shot as an English spy, exactly as his protégé Barchenko would be a decade later.16 So, did Vladimirov recruit his fellow occultist to spy for the Cheka in 1918, or was he even then a British agent who enlisted the like-minded Barchenko into another, more secret conspiracy?
One more twist is that some insist Vladimirov was identical with another clandestine operative, Yakov Blumkin.17 That they were one and the same is demonstrably untrue, but Blumkin and Vladimirov did move in the same murky circles in 1918. Through those same circles, Blumkin also came to know Barchenko. Thus, there is reason to suspect, if no more, that Blumkin was another British double-agent. As a supposedly renegade chekist, he assassinated the German ambassador in Moscow in July 1918. Nevertheless, like Vladimirov, he soon found his way back into the good graces of Soviet intelligence. A year after Vladimirov’s demise, however, Blumkin would stand before a firing squad as a Trotskyite conspirator.Barchenko also found friends in Soviet academia. With such backing, during 1921-22, he led an expedition to the remote Kola Peninsula, north of the Arctic Circle, where he found ancient petroglyphs and megalithic structures.18 This reinforced his belief in an advanced prehistoric civilisation linked to mysterious Shambhala.As early as 1920, Barchenko sought permission to mount a “scientific-propagandistic” expedition into Mongolia and Tibet to search for “Red Shambhala.”19 Recovery of its ancient science and wisdom, he argued, would expand Moscow’s influence throughout Asia. This early lobbying came to naught, though it may have influenced Moscow to dispatch two Baltic sailors, Barchenko’s former “pupils,” on a secret mission to Tibet in the early 20s.20
At the same time, Barchenko founded a “Masonic” lodge dubbed the Edinoe Trudovoe Bratstvo, ETB, or the “United Labor Brotherhood.” The new Brotherhood included Vladimirov and numerous other current or former chekists. Closely associated with the ETB, if not a formal member, was Yakov Blumkin, back in the saddle as a special agent of Soviet intelligence.
The Lodge’s name bears a curious resemblance to an earlier group formed by Gurdjieff’s followers, the Edinoe Trudovoe Sodruzhstvo (“United Labor Fellowship”), and at least one prominent member of ETB, P.S. Shandarovskii, was a devotee of Gurdjieff.21 Another link may have existed through Soviet sculptor Sergei Merkurov, who was Gurdjieff’s cousin.22 Interestingly, Gurdjieff had alleged ties to British intelligence, including the charge that he had for years served as a British asset in Central Asia and the Near East.23 What is undeniable is that among Gurdjieff’s pupils in pre-Revolutionary Russia was English composer Sir Paul Dukes, a man whose interests included not only Gurdjieff, but also esoteric Buddhism and Tibet. Dukes joined MI1c (MI6) during World War I and for much of 1919 headed the British spy network in Petrograd.24 Could Barchenko and Vladimirov have been linked to this?
By far the most important brother of the ETB was chekist bigwig Gleb Ivanovich Bokii. Bokii, a veteran Bolshevik, had an equally venerable involvement in the occult. Among other things, he was a pre-Revolutionary member of the “Kabbalistic Order of the Rose & Cross.” Curiously, his advancement in that Order was approved by none other than Aleksandr Barchenko.25 More curious still, Bokii took over the P-Cheka after Uritsky’s death and was running the show when Barchenko was “recruited” in late 1918. Nevertheless, both men later swore that they never met until the early 1920s. Bokii would confess that for him the Revolution died with Lenin in early 1924. Growing disillusionment led him to oppose Stalin and to support Barchenko’s schemes, schemes that, he admitted, included espionage.26
By 1924, Bokii sat in control of the OGPU’s (the renamed Cheka) Spetsotdel, or “Special Department.” This outfit handled codes and included an elite outfit, the 7th Section, which delved into paranormal issues ranging from hypnotism and ESP to the Abominable Snowman.27 The Spetsotdel also guarded the so-called “black dossiers,” the personal files of the Soviet leaders which included sexual kinks and, undoubtedly, any association with things occult.28
Besides personal curiosity, Bokii had practical incentive to pursue paranormal research. Telepathic communication offered a perfect means to send and receive messages from agents abroad. Likewise, what we today call Remote Viewing offered the ability to spy on the imperialist enemy without leaving Moscow. Unlocking the secrets of hypnotism and mind control had potential application in propaganda. To explore such matters, Bokii put Barchenko in charge of a special “neuroenergetics” lab within the All-Union Institute for Experimental Medicine.29
Still, the primary aim of Barchenko and the ETB was establishing direct contact with Shambhala. To this end, he exploited Bokii’s help and made common cause with other esoteric groups, most notably the “Great Brotherhood of Asia.” He connived with at least two members of the Brotherhood, a Tibetan lama, Naga Naven, who claimed to be a direct representative of Shambhala, and a Mongolian official, Khayan Khirva, future chief of the Mongolian secret police.30 In that role, Khirva would work side-by-side with Yakov Blumkin.
In the spring of 1925, thanks to Bokii’s access to secret funds, the Shambhala expedition seemed set to go. Bokii picked Blumkin to head the expedition’s secret intelligence angle.31 But the plan ran into opposition. Dark rumours painted Bokii as a dangerous degenerate who drank human blood.32 A leading opponent was Mikhail Trilesser, head of the OGPU’s foreign intelligence branch (INO). He naturally felt that any activity outside the USSR fell into his bailiwick. By summer, Barchenko’s Shambhala expedition was dead. Or was it?
In September 1925, a humble Muslim pilgrim crossed the Pamir passes into British-controlled Kashmir. In fact, the pilgrim was Yakov Blumkin who was on his way to even more remote Ladakh to rendezvous with an expedition led by Nicholas Roerich. Roerich’s aim was to enter Tibet and contact Shambhala. However, soon after crossing the frontier, tribal police seized Blumkin. Apparently, someone had tipped-off the British. The crafty chekist soon gave his captors the slip, and assuming a new guise as a Mongol lama, pressed on towards Roerich. Anyway, that is how Blumkin later told the story. There could be another explanation. The brief arrest and fortuitous escape also gave Blumkin convenient cover to check-in with British intelligence prior to joining Roerich.

Russian Painter, Theosophist and Philosopher, Nicholas Roerich

Born in St. Petersburg in 1874, Nicholas (Nikolai) Konstantinovich Roerich is best known today as a painter and tireless advocate of Yoga and Buddhism in the West. He definitely was a Theosophist and probably a Martinist.33 He also became a secret Soviet agent-of-influence. Some of his admirers vociferously dispute this, and it may be true that Roerich used the Bolsheviks as much as they used him. Nevertheless, his ties to Soviet intelligence are too extensive to be denied.34By the time the Revolution hit Russia, Roerich had left the country, and he initially showed no interest in the Great Socialist Experiment. By 1920, he was in London where he joined the local Theosophist scene dominated by Annie Besant. Besant and her followers were outspoken supporters of Indian independence which brought them under the scrutiny of British security. By the early 20s, Moscow had become the main benefactor of anti-British agitation in Asia and in the view of MI6’s Desmond Morton (later one of Churchill’s most trusted spies) “nearly all these theosophist and theosophical societies are connected in some way with Bolshevism, Indian revolutionaries and other unpleasant activities.”35
Roerich came to see British influence over Tibet as an evil he must combat, and during 1920 other things pushed him further towards Moscow. Roerich’s wife Elena (Helene), a medium, began receiving messages from an entity calling himself Master Morya, or Allal Ming, who claimed to be a member of the Great White Brotherhood and “spiritual teacher of Tibet.”36 Allal Ming convinced Roerich that he was the key to the fulfilment of a “Great Plan” which would end with creation of a vast, pan-Buddhist state that would encompass Tibet, Mongolia, parts of China, and much of Siberia. The first stage would be the “Shambhala War,” the end result of which would be the “earthly expression of the Invisible Kingdom of Shambhala.”37 The Plan is virtually identical to the one envisioned by Baron Ungern at almost the same time. However, whereas Ungern aimed to build his New Order by making war on the godless Bolsheviks, Roerich’s guide encouraged him to see the Soviets as allies and Lenin as a harbinger of a new, enlightened age. Perhaps the King of the World was hedging his bets.
At the same time, Roerich acquired a new follower in the person of a young Russian Theosophist, Vladimir Anatol’evich Shibaev. Shibaev also happened to be an agent for the Communist International (Comintern) working with Indian nationalists. He introduced the Roerich’s to other Soviet officials and encouraged their plans to move to India as a first step in realising the Great Plan. London’s MI5 kept a close eye on Shibaev and his dealings with Roerich.38
The Roerich’s moved to New York in October 1920. They thus evaded the hostile scrutiny of British authorities and secured support among wealthy Americans. One such benefactor was Wall Street broker Louis Levy Horch who helped found the Roerich Museum and became the Mystic’s financial manager and mainstay. Naturally, Horch, too, had a secret life. A successful businessman with important connections in American politics, he also was an underground operative for the Cheka/OGPU.39
The Roerich’s next relocated to Darjeeling, India in late 1923. This put them under the watchful eyes of Frederick Marsham Bailey, the British “political resident” in nearby Sikkim, and a man intimately familiar with Russian activities in Central Asia.
In spring 1925, Roerich was ready to launch his expedition into the Himalayas and beyond. The synchronicity with Barchenko’s plan seems more than coincidental and doubtless had something to do with the scuttling of that effort. Travelling under the American flag and backed by Yankee money, Roerich had the advantage of not being a blatant Soviet cat’s paw. Still, it is interesting that Bokii’s and Barchenko’s pal Blumkin should materialise at Roerich’s side. Whatever his connection to the British, did Blumkin maintain communication with his friends back in Moscow? Regardless, he and Roerich would roam the fringes of Tibet (never reaching Lhasa), and press on into Sinkiang and Mongolia. There was even time for a side-trip to Moscow where Roerich hob-nobbed with more Soviet officials. In fact, his expedition was Moscow-managed from beginning to end, whether Roerich fully realised it or not.
That fact was not lost on the British. During this period, MI6 monitored Red activities in Asia through one of its men in the Moscow embassy, Arthur V. Burbury. In 1928, persons in London concluded that Roerich had been “illuminated” as to the “excellence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.”40

Real-Life Model for Indiana Jones, Roy Chapman Andrews

In contrast to Barchenko and Roerich, American Roy Chapman Andrews had no obvious interest in the occult and paranormal.41 Of course, given his curiosity about natural mysteries, he must have harboured a little about supernatural ones. Born in Wisconsin in 1884, Andrews evidenced an early lust for knowledge and adventure. By World War I, he had acquired a degree from Columbia University, membership in the exclusive Explorer’s Club and employment at the American Museum of Natural History (MNH).
His early explorations took him to China, which doubtless accounted for a new assignment that came his way in 1918. He travelled as a “naturalist” but he was really an officer of the US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) assigned to the American Legation in Beijing.42 Befitting a good spy, Andrews was subsequently very mum about what he did there, but he made at least two “reconnaissance” trips into turbulent Mongolia, visiting its capital of Urga (where Baron Ungern would soon take charge) and venturing into Siberia where the Russian Civil War raged.43 Andrews subsequently compiled a map of the “Southern Boundary Region of Asiatic Russia” which found its way to the US Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID).44 In his travels, did Andrews hear the same whispers of Agharti/Shambhala that reached the ears of Ossendowski, Roerich, and Barchenko?
Andrews left the Navy in the spring of 1919, but no sooner did he return to the States that he offered his services to the Army’s MID. His former boss in Beijing, US Naval Attaché Commander I.V. Gillis, vouched for Andrews as someone “who in case of emergency could be depended upon to do work with required skill and nerve,” and a colleague at the Museum of Natural History assured MID that Andrews was the “only American who is at all familiar with Mongolian.”45
Between 1922 and 1930, Andrews led five expeditions into the Gobi Desert and adjoining regions of Mongolia. All were sponsored by the MNH and made notable fossil discoveries, including the first dinosaur eggs. However, the original goal of the explorations was not animal fossils, but evidence of early man. Andrew’s boss at the Museum, Henry Fairfield Osborn, was convinced that the origins of the human race lay somewhere in Eastern or Central Asia. Some of his theories echoed those of the Theosophists, or so thought the Theosophists.46
From our perspective, the most interesting of Andrews’ forays was the one that commenced in early 1925 and took him and his companions deep into western Mongolia. The “mapmaking” team consisted of a US Army officer, Lt. Fred Butler, and a British officer, Lt. H.O. Robinson, detached from His Majesty’s Legation in Beijing.47 Butler’s later report also went to MID.48
Andrews might have gleaned information about Roerich’s activities from another explorer then roaming the wastes of Central Asia, Ossendowski’s nemesis, Sven Hedin. The Swede told Andrews that his expedition was a “reconnaissance” of a projected Lufthansa air route across Central Asia to Beijing, but it may have been something more.49In any case, Andrews dutifully reported his conversation with Hedin to MID.
In the end, Shambhala remained hidden, or so it seems. Roerich and Andrews went on to live out full lives and pass on, respectively, in 1947 and 1960. Barchenko, Bokii and the brethren of ETB were not so fortunate. All perished in the purges of the late 1930, condemned for crimes they did not – or did – commit.

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Dr. RICHARD SPENCE is a professor of History at the University of Idaho. Among other works, he is the author of Trust No One: The Secret World of Sidney Reilly (Feral House, 2002). His latest book is Secret Agent 666: Aleister Crowley, British Intelligence and the Occult, published by Feral House.

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